apt-cyg

Warning

apt-cyg is unmaintained. The author stopped maintaining apt-cyg in 2017, stating ‘I am no longer working on apt-cyg’ and directing users to fork it instead.

ID

apt-cyg

Home page

https://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg

Platforms

⨂ Unix (Cygwin only)

Operations

installed · search · install · remove · sync

purl types

pkg:apt-cyg

CLI name

apt-cyg

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: apt-cyg

Source

meta_package_manager/managers/apt_cyg.toml

apt-cyg is a single bash script wrapping Cygwin’s package repository.

Cygwin has no root/sudo concept: every operation runs as the invoking user. apt-cyg has no upgrade, outdated or cache-cleaning command at all: packages are upgraded by re-running Cygwin’s own setup program.

Both list (installed) and listall (search) print bare package names, one per line, with no version or description. apt-cyg applies the search query as a regular expression over the downloaded setup.ini catalog, so mpm refilters exact and extended matches itself.

What mpm adds to apt-cyg

Through mpm, apt-cyg gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover apt-cyg alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your apt-cyg commands, in mpm

You already know apt-cyg: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With apt-cyg	With mpm
List what’s installed	apt-cyg list	mpm --apt-cyg installed
Search for a package	apt-cyg listall <query>	mpm --apt-cyg search <query>
Install a package	apt-cyg install <package_id>	mpm install pkg:apt-cyg/<package_id>
Remove a package	apt-cyg remove <package_id>	mpm remove pkg:apt-cyg/<package_id>

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported	Notes
installed	✓
outdated
orphans
search	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by mpm
install	✓
upgrade
upgrade_all
remove	✓
sync	✓
cleanup
doctor

Selecting and configuring apt-cyg

Deselect apt-cyg for a single run with --no-apt-cyg, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
apt-cyg = false

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.apt-cyg]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template apt-cyg prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around apt-cyg, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --apt-cyg dump apt-cyg.toml, then mpm restore apt-cyg.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --apt-cyg sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations needs root.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown

State of apt-cyg’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

• Status: ➖ N/A (unmaintained since 2017; wraps Cygwin’s setup.exe repository)

• Reference: transcode-open/apt-cyg

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: No registry of their own

• Retraction: ➖ Not applicable: these managers either delegate to whichever manager they front (pkcon, topgrade) or wrap a retired project or a discontinued platform

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe

The version is probed by running:

$ apt-cyg --version
apt-cyg version 1

and extracted with:

r"apt-cyg version (?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces

Raw native outputs captured in the bundled definition: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know apt-cyg well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ apt-cyg list
bash
coreutils
tree

$ apt-cyg listall {query}
tree

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --apt-cyg installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog

• 7.2.0 (2026-07-09)

  • Add apt-cyg (Cygwin) package manager with installed, search, install, remove and sync support on Windows/Cygwin; a bundled configuration-defined manager.